Sunil Dutt was the first angry young man: Amitabh

By Hindustan Times

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who earned the tag of Angry Young Man after his films Zanjeer and Namak Haraam, believes the first actor to hold the title is not him but Sunil Dutt who portrayed an angry Birju in the 1957-epic Mother India. In the Mehboob Khan-directed Mother India, Sunil Dutt
played the rebel son of a woman, played by Nargis, who works hard for survival with her two sons after her husband disappears.

"'Namak Haram' bore seeds of the anger that was next seen in Zanjeer, and the subsequent titling of the epithet Angry Young Man by the media," Big B wrote on his Facebook page.

"But I have always believed that the first powerful depiction or in a sense the birth of the so called Angry Young Man, was designed by Mehboob Saheb (Mehboob Khan) in 'Mother India', where the character Birju, played so brilliantly by Sunil Dutt, was depicted," he wrote.

While Zanjeer featured Amitabh as inspector Vijay Khanna, Namak Haraam saw him as Vikram Maharaj.